A Night at the Opera

The documentary miniature by renowned director Sergei Loznitsa was made as a tribute to the art of opera and a polemic against social rituals and historical veracity. The edited film combines footages of opera performances from the 1950s and 1960s, political celebrations, and folk festivities. The nobility and grandiosity of the opera galas, reminiscent of the French imperial tradition, is deconstructed through a fictional montage logic where street folk culture triumphs over the rituals of the French bourgeoisie. There is one particular part towering above the political allegory and the treatise on theatricality: Maria Callas’s timeless performance of an aria from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.„In general, the role of theatre (and opera) in politics, including the contemporary one, is colossal. All political actions, including the civil disobedience movements, have theatrical features. After all, politics itself is a kind of stage performance." (Sergei Loznitsa)